Stall in BW2

Ever since G/S/C, Stall has been a major team archetype putting to practice Koga's philosophy concerning indirect damage to win battles. Stall features careful teambuilding around bulky Pokemon and quick recovery to withstand and outlast the opponent's attacks while wearing them away with passive damage such as Toxic poison and entry hazards. Like Mewtwo it has changed, for better or for worse, throughout the generations and meta-games, never being quite as prominent as it was at its birth yet a top-tier competitor all the same. With the introduction of BW2, Stall once again has to adapt to the new changes brought by
new formes,
new events,
new Dream World releases,
new move tutors,
and even newly freed Ubers.

How has Stall changed with BW2? Is it more or less viable than it was BW or in any previous generations? Feel free to discuss anything ranging from Full Stall to Semi-Stall.

For those of you interested in a introduction to stall, the most recent guide (although it is for BW) is to be found right here.

Stall should never be seriously used in BW2. Tornadus-T and Thundurus on their own would be enough to say this but now with Terrakion getting SR, Haxorus getting Aqua Tail / Superpower, Deo-D teams still running around, Keldeo, and Genesect, it's not going to work unless you have complete weather control all of the time and a counter to whatever Deo-D they have (you can't have both reliably in BW2). Even then, Thundurus and Haxorus don't have many troubles taking out multiple walls before they go down. Stall would need Excadrill and / or Giratina to try to compete with offense. It's not going to simply adapt and be done with its troubles.

Do you think this is a sign of an unhealthy meta-game or just that competitive Pokemon has changed from Offense vs Stall to Weather Wars ? Has this been seen in previous generations (ignoring RBY) or is it a recent problem?

Edit: Sorry, I meant has the focus of the game changed to winning the weather war for whatever team you are using as opposed to breaking stall or walling offense?

The problem is simply too much power creep. Stall did have a power creep of it's own with stuff like Regenerator and Rain Dish Tenta but Offense wins Offense vs. stall consistently here. It doesn't matter what weathers beat another- they're just arbitrary upgrades / counters to different offense and stall and the offense consistently beats stall because of Deo-D / Tornadus / Thundurus / Genesect / Terrakion etc. Banning rain does nerf offense more than stall when Torn / Thund / Keldeo are in the equation and it does release the need to counter entire weather team archetypes (packing defensive counters to them isn't a "challenge", it's not possible) in order to deal with those threats but with the current balance of offense and stall as is it will surely take more than just banning weather to create a level playing field.

Yeah like yee said, it's close to impossible. I feel like stall benefits a lot right now from having catch all defensive mons like Cresselia (in Sun), SpDef Hippowdon, RestTalk Gyara and so on. Doing this lets you free up slots for anti-Deo-D, anti weather and so on. On the other hand, it means you can't cover the various offensive threats so well, so you have to rely on simply checking them. Most of my successful defensive teams recently have had things like CB Dragonite on them or some other source of offensive pressure to try and disrupt the opponents momentum.

Oh and yeah, it's a sign of an unhealthy metagame. Genesect for Ubers! (and then please god Suspect Tornadus-T and Drizzle / Drought).

I have heard many players saying '' stall is bad in BW2 '', or '' don't use stall in BW2 '' but this is bullshit imo. The real problem of stall is that it is difficult to build it. Good stall teams can still be built, and be very effective, if you have the guts and the patience to go through all that effort though...

One of the best approaches to stall right now would be semi-stall, aka stall with a touch of offense. It is so good to have a revenge killer is stall teams, just in case one of all those dangerous offemsive threats that try to overwhelm your walls succeeds in doing so. For example Tornadus-T with Taunt is almost impossible for stall teams to handle without Jirachi, Rotom-W, Bronzong or Zapdos, so having a scarfer is very useful against it. Some other examples are NP Thundurus-T, SD Garchomp in Sun or in Sand, which can get past its #1 counters such as Skarmory and Bronzong with Fire Fang, and SD Haxorus, all of which can get past Stall teams with little effort, so once again a Scarfer helps.

I find stall to be pretty easy. Now while I haven't peaked over about 1550, I've had a lot more success with Stall teams than I ever had with Offensive teams(think my highest Offensive team peaked....700. :P).

Nice Thread here, play with stall team isn't impossible in the current metagame but is so difficult and generally offense beats stall because of Deoxys-d, Terrakion, Keldeo, Garchomp, Thundurus, Tornadus and so on (also Landorus Special Sweeper/Wall Breaker is hard to block for stall team). I totally agree with yee, bubbly and alexwolf. And, I'd see a tournament without Genesect and Drizzle, just out of curiosity.

I don't think I've seen full, non-rain stall in BW at all. There are generally too many threats to check with a 6 Pokemon defensive core, which is why the almost always have something like Scarf Jirachi (in BW1) or Scarf Genesect (BW2) to take some pressure off that core. Loads of people have tried to claim their stall teams have been doing well in BW2, but I'm willing to bet a lot of these people aren't actually running stall, and are just running something more like balance (I know a lot of people call these teams "semi-stall" but I really hate that term, semi-stall is stall that has some offensive presence in the form of a scarfer or a late-game cleaner or something, which makes it balance. I'm not a fan of people labelling their teams with overcomplicated names that mean the same thing lol).

On top of Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, Keldeo etc, I think one of the bigger changes in BW2 that has really hurt stall is Giga Drain Venusaur. Sun offense was already a pretty big issue for the vast majority of stall teams, but now Chansey and Blissey aren't even good checks to Venusaur, as at +2 its healing back loads of HP with Giga Drain. From experience the best answers most stall teams have to Growth Venusaur is either Heatran (which pretty much has to be Shed Shell to even stand a chance against Sun anymore), or by attempting to get Hippowdown in on anything other than Giga Drain and pivoting to force Venusaur out with Genesect (I don't really consider any "stall" team with Scarf Genesect as full stall anyway but w/e)

edit: also just for the record, I thought rain stall was one of the most overrated playstyles in BW1. Once everyone knew what it did and how to face it, it became incredibly easy to prepare for. A handful of mons (Virizion, Toxicroak, Tornadus, Sub SD Terrakion, non-choiced Landorus, most Dragons etc) had excellent match-ups against it and could sweep with little to no support. It was no doubt annoying to face for the first couple of weeks it was popular, but I feel its one of those incredibly match-up dependent playstyles; you either had a team that would nearly always been Rain stall or you had a team that couldn't really touch it (i.e. a bad team).

I have heard many players saying '' stall is bad in BW2 '', or '' don't use stall in BW2 '' but this is bullshit imo. The real problem of stall is that it is difficult to build it. Good stall teams can still be built, and be very effective, if you have the guts and the patience to go through all that effort though...

One of the best approaches to stall right now would be semi-stall, aka stall with a touch of offense. It is so good to have a revenge killer is stall teams, just in case one of all those dangerous offemsive threats that try to overwhelm your walls succeeds in doing so. For example Tornadus-T with Taunt is almost impossible for stall teams to handle without Jirachi, Rotom-W, Bronzong or Zapdos, so having a scarfer is very useful against it. Some other examples are NP Thundurus-T, SD Garchomp in Sun or in Sand, which can get past its #1 counters such as Skarmory and Bronzong with Fire Fang, and SD Haxorus, all of which can get past Stall teams with little effort, so once again a Scarfer helps.

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I agree semi-stall is probably the best way to run stall nowadays. A good reliable ScarfMon is very important for revenge killing bothersome threats like the ones you mentioned and I feel should be a staple on any stall team. However, I'm not sure if it enough anymore to deal with the sheer number of wall breakers that have been recently introduced. Stuff like Hydreigon aren't easy to wear away with hazards meaning switching out of your Scarfer isn't much of problem for it. Tornadus T can easily pop in and out using taunt/substitute to screw with attemps to hit it with status while fishing for confusion hax with Hurricane spam to buy it the extra attack it needs to KO before its opponent has time to heal itself. I'm not sure if it isn't impossible to build a solid stall team but it certainly is a challenge and I don't think there will be much diversity to be found.

All the same, has anybody found any previously overlooked defensive Pokemon that now have potential in the BW2 meta-game? Bubbly mentioned a few already that are interesting. What niche(s) do they have that makes them good choices?

In BW1 I liked how double status Chansey (Toxic+Twave) could check a quite a few more things, like Alakazam and Victreebel, in exchange for Cleric/SR support. It could be still used to deal with Giga Drain Venusaur, but it doesn't deal with anything else that BW2 brought.

Edit: I meant Stall in a more general sense, so feel free to include Rain stall, semi-stall/balance (close enough), etc.

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I think stall works rather well in this meta, however it packs a few requirements. Hippowdon or Tyranitar MUST be used, to shut down rain or sun. Then, make sure you have a counter to sand sweepers, but this can usually be attained through gliscor or skarmory at the moment. Heatran is also necessary to take anything genesect has. That leaves you with unfortunately three spots, but there are enough pokes that can fill the roles well enough. I don't actually think viable stall has become more diverse, just the opposite. The layout of the metagame makes it so certain pokes are required, and only the best pokes should fill the remainder. On a side note, I haven't seen blissey in a long time. Where did they all go?

doughboy's post from the megathread (scroll down to the later half of the post) summarizes pretty well why stall has a very very difficult time working right now - you can't get the right mix of utility and bulk on the team. stall has the need for a LOT of utility roles - you need hazards, you need phazing, you generally need a spinner - and the mons that can do these things are lacking in the bulk needed to survive against this meta's offensive threats. offense teams, depending on how heavily offensive they are, don't generally need as many roles to be filled (offense does not need a phazer at all for example). conversely the things that do have the bulk and survivability tend to be crappy team players that can contribute relatively little to a team besides their name and face - guys like slowbro and amoonguss and bronzong that really don't do much besides the occasional random use of status and pivoting through attacks.

stall has only six slots and it's nigh impossible to fit all of these utilities onto the team without crippling the bulk of the team. in addition stall has to worry a lot more about type stacking than offense does (offense can actually benefit from running multiple mons of the same type - for stall, more than two of a single weakness rapidly becomes a liability) and it really shows when you're so crammed for slots.

in addition there are threats in bw2 whose counter lists are extremely restricted (the lists of true counters to genesect and tornadus-T, for example, are rather short). that means that in order to survive in bw2 you basically have to run certain mons. the sun genesect+dugtrio core is really a prime example of this - if stall loses its genesect counter while the little metal bastard is still alive, genesect takes out any remaining sun counters (eg latias) and you lose. the number of variants of heatran that can beat the core singlehandedly is infamously small - shed shell restalk (we all know how shit it is but sometimes you just don't have the choice), flame charge (lol no), magma storm (shit accuracy and trapping doesn't always fit on the team, especially in stall) or scarf (generally unsuited to stall). the problem is that it can sometimes be even more restrictive to implement a plan across your entire team to deal with these threats, so you have to choose between sacrificing a slot right away for shed shell tran or making a shaky solution on the spot to a premier-class metagame threat.

the list of shit like this goes on and on for stall so it is really really hard right now. weatherless stall is basically impossible (i have tried). rain and sand can stall as always but it's still much harder than making or playing offense teams under those weathers

Well there is Specially Defensive Hitmontop that can take whatever Genesect wants to throw around and isn't bothered by Dugtrio in the slightest. Plus it can spin away hazards which is good to have on any sort of stall team. (I'm trying to remain optimistic, though I agree with you guys that Stall got raped by BW2 and nobody seems to miss it.)

lol hitmontop can hardly beat most of the spinblockers in UU, it definitely won't be able to do it in OU. the most it can accomplish is foresight on the switch, which works for any spinblocker that learns it, but is a massive moveslot cost. in addition hitmontop will easily be worn down since the only recovery it has is rest. this is itself another example of the problem - there are precious few spinners that have the bulk to hold up in OU. dishcruel is infamously durable, but it's only that reliable in rain - it's probably one of the best choices you can make on a stall team though, really, so i'll give you that one. starmie doesn't fit on stall - it doesn't have the natural bulk at all and water/psychic is really not a very good typing when you impart pursuit and volturn weakness. the fewer psychics you run on stall, the better. donphan gets washed away by rain. forretress is role-overloaded and has no recovery. all the UU spinners are UU for a reason (don't even start on claydol). if a spinner has to come in repeatedly, it WILL die, and you have to be careful because if you use your spinner's bulk to wall things, it might die when you need it for spinning later. this is a problem for every spinner that lacks recover/roost/etc, except cruel.

we can look at spikers as well - really the only solid spiker, and generally one of the most solid defensive mons in the game in its category, is skarmory, who is overflowing with support options and bulk. forry has no recovery. ferrothorn is a bit unreliable outside of rain, too many things will be running fire coverage for it (in rain it's pretty respectable though). cloyster on stall is what we call a bad idea. deoxys-D is okay but the entire meta is gaming against it and it has hardcore 4mss. all the lower tiered spikers lack the bulk. and so on and so on

if a spinner has to come in repeatedly, it WILL die, and you have to be careful because if you use your spinner's bulk to wall things, it might die when you need it for spinning later. this is a problem for every spinner that lacks recover/roost/etc, except cruel.

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This is one of the biggest liability I've noticed on the stall teams I've played against, they simply can't use their spinner for everything it needs to do. If you need a spinner on your team that's really all it's going to be able to do for you or it's going to struggle to do everything because you're giving it too many jobs. You can't have your spinner also be in charge of taking hits from several threats, and expect it to have enough time to also get up entry hazards. Tentacruel can do this in the rain to an extent, but from what I've seen it still gets worn down a lot faster then it needs to be because it's trying to do too much.

Another major issue for stall teams is the sleep mechanic. I remember in DPPt trying to grab free turns via double switching to burn a turn of rest, and you can't do that now. This really limits how many Pokemon can run recovery on your team since most of them only have rest as an option, and rest is pretty awful now. It also hurts against things like Breloom, because you're basically losing something for the remainder of the game to take the spore unless you have a status absorber, which are usually pretty easy to spot in team preview (referring to things like Gliscor / magic guard things with flame orb) and you just have to make sure to get your spore off before they can get themselves situated. That sleep thing applies to offense as well, but stall teams really can't afford to lose a member when they're trying to check the majority of the metagame. There's just too much to deal with to be able to deal it down a Pokemon from one move.

Which brings me to the final reason that I think stall is pretty weak in this metagame; as has been mentioned there's simply too many really powerful threats to deal with. Too many things that just need one free turn, something a lot of stall teams give up really easily, to become almost unstoppable. I agree with the sentiment that defensive minded teams that still pack some offense can function through this, but without that element of offense I think stall teams are pretty dead in this metagame.

Ive said this before, and Ill say it again, the one real big issue stall has universally is mother fucking Genesect. Genesect severly limits the teambuilding a stall team has to do, pretty much you are forced to run shed shell Heatran or Tentacruel because of the fucker, outside of that you don't have very many options outside of running protect on almost all your pokemon (and even that can be fucked if they don't have a choice item).

Keldeo, Thundurus, Tornadus are all solid threats, but all of them can be dealt with by good team building, honestly before Genesect came out I had very little issue with any of them because I frankly had the team building space to slap on a counter, now I can't do so easily any more.

lol hitmontop can hardly beat most of the spinblockers in UU, it definitely won't be able to do it in OU. the most it can accomplish is foresight on the switch, which works for any spinblocker that learns it, but is a massive moveslot cost. in addition hitmontop will easily be worn down since the only recovery it has is rest. this is itself another example of the problem - there are precious few spinners that have the bulk to hold up in OU. dishcruel is infamously durable, but it's only that reliable in rain - it's probably one of the best choices you can make on a stall team though, really, so i'll give you that one. starmie doesn't fit on stall - it doesn't have the natural bulk at all and water/psychic is really not a very good typing when you impart pursuit and volturn weakness. the fewer psychics you run on stall, the better. donphan gets washed away by rain. forretress is role-overloaded and has no recovery. all the UU spinners are UU for a reason (don't even start on claydol). if a spinner has to come in repeatedly, it WILL die, and you have to be careful because if you use your spinner's bulk to wall things, it might die when you need it for spinning later. this is a problem for every spinner that lacks recover/roost/etc, except cruel.

we can look at spikers as well - really the only solid spiker, and generally one of the most solid defensive mons in the game in its category, is skarmory, who is overflowing with support options and bulk. forry has no recovery. ferrothorn is a bit unreliable outside of rain, too many things will be running fire coverage for it (in rain it's pretty respectable though). cloyster on stall is what we call a bad idea. deoxys-D is okay but the entire meta is gaming against it and it has hardcore 4mss. all the lower tiered spikers lack the bulk. and so on and so on

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You kinda missed why I mentioned Hitmontop in the first place, which was to switch in repeatedly on Genesect. Spinning was just a bonus it offered and whether or not it was any good at it didn't really matter. (In any case, it was a niche choice suggested to try to avoid making it seem as if I just made this thread so I could complain about how stall got screwed. Which wasn't my intention.)

Anyways, I agree with the problem with using spinners. Not only do they lack recovery but spinning has become even more difficult as you can rarely find the opportunity to give your opponent a free turn in the current meta-game.

Spikers are hard things to find. Skarmory is obviously the best for this purpose. Forretress main selling point is the fact it can spin while setting them up (plus Volt Turn is a cool scouting move). Ferrothorn I've had a hard time falling in love with whenever I use it. I guess it's cause it doesn't have the walling powers of Skarmory nor can it Rapid Spin like Forretress. It's got some cool resists and attacking options, though.

Ive said this before, and Ill say it again, the one real big issue stall has universally is mother fucking Genesect. Genesect severly limits the teambuilding a stall team has to do, pretty much you are forced to run shed shell Heatran or Tentacruel because of the fucker, outside of that you don't have very many options outside of running protect on almost all your pokemon (and even that can be fucked if they don't have a choice item).

Keldeo, Thundurus, Tornadus are all solid threats, but all of them can be dealt with by good team building, honestly before Genesect came out I had very little issue with any of them because I frankly had the team building space to slap on a counter, now I can't do so easily any more.

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I think it's more than just Genesect. Keldeo has a horribly powerful Hydro Pump under rain and access to Secret Sword to screw with typical special walls. On top of that it has a SR resist and decent bulk so switching around isn't too much a problem for it. Thundurus has to be dealt with by something faster, which is can be hard to switch-in. Thankfully he does have a SR weakness though, on the other hand, he is immune to all forms of Spikes and can use Volt Absorb to switch-in a few extra times. Tornaus-T is terrible for stall since he has virtually infinite switch-in opportunities, access to Taunt and spamable Substitutes, can scout with U-Turn, and can hax past his counters with Hurricane. Then there are things like Hydreigon and Haxorus that got new tutor moves to improve their wall breaking capabilities.

If your worried about Keldeo and Thundurus-T, use Amoonguss, which owns Keldeo, and while one on one Thundurus-T does win, it can't 1HKO meaning it loses a ton of health, allowing something else to finish it off. Tornadus is annoying, but realistically, it can break through Chansey or Blissey, best it can do is stick around until the end, and then you can easily kill it. If you really worred about Tornadus-T, you can always use Jirachi to.

But literally throw in the fact that you also have to have a fucking specialized Genesect counter, and then team building becomes and utter nightmare, I still haven't been about to make a full stall team without a major weakness to at least something in the top 25.

i have never had huge problems with keldeo or thundurus-T to be honest. they're big threats to be sure but not markedly more so than the other things in this game. vs thundurus, handling NP is a very risky art, but so it is for any +2 boosting sweeper. i tend to incorporate a lot of phazing into my teams so i can handle it. keldeo's flaw is having stabs whose coverage sucks too damn much, and really people are not running it in rain as much as they should be (otherwise how can we explain its low-ass usage?). +1 rain hydro pump from keldeo is pretty beastly when you can't bring in chansey, but i find that the things that check keldeo best (amoong, latias, jelli) slide their way onto my teams naturally so i usually have a solution.

vs tornadus though, you basically have to kill everything else on the team and then kill it once it's the last mon. regenerator makes it astoundingly difficult to kill. it is wallable, but every time you think you've hurt it, it just uturns away and all your hard work disappears. bloody infuriating to say the least. also, chansey is not a solution to superpower tornadus. i am sick of hearing that it supposedly counters it, when it will definitely lose in the long run. chansey cannot switch in on superpower repeatedly. if you run enough phys def to not be 2hkoed after hazards, you will get washed away by +1 hydro pumps from keldeo and toed and their ilk. with no leftovers, it is basically always a fight you are going to lose. in other words, chansey is not a standalone solution to tornadus-T, the way sdef jirachi usually is. granted, if you play wisely and never switch chansey in on a superpower (only start taking superpowers after you're in safely), you can generally handle it. blissey gets floored by superpower so no conversation to be had there lol

and as for hydreigon, haxorus, mence, mamo, etc. a stall team should really have a plan for all of them, but damn it is tough. broad, powerful neutral coverage is really the name of the game in counter-minded play right now. just look at things like terrakion; my tentacruel sure as hell does not like coming in on LO stone edge.
mamo's strong ground/ice is surprisingly difficult to deal with - the best solution for stall is generally phys def skarm (if you run specially defensive spreads, you take just under half from icicle crash, so you'll lose to flinches and hazards - trust me, it happened to me ALL the time until i switched spreads). bronzong is boss but gets worn down way too easily (RESTALK BRONZONG LETS GO). in addition, bronzong is one of those bulky-no-utility mons i was talking about earlier - the ONLY useful thing it has is stealth rock. phazing? nope. spinning? nope. it doesn't even get heal bell, yet it's a FREAKING BELL
haxorus is a powerhouse, but its problem is that stall will generally incorporate a solution to it in the process of finding a solution to something else - it's powerful, but not the kind of threat that makes me say "okay shit i don't have a plan for this". physdef skarm handles it quite comfortably as long as you're careful about +2 rain aqua tails n shit, and if you're in rain you got bigger problems to worry about.
chansey can generally handle hydreigon, but it's a losing battle for both of them - hydreigon hurts chansey deeply with superpower but really will almost never 2hko it, and unlike tornadus-T, it cannot be a lasting threat unless it gives up turns to use roost. that means i can generally counterstall it if it tries to wear me down. watch out for taunt/roost stallbreaking sets though, those are hell and you basically autolose to those. thank god they're so damn rare
the problem with mence is mainly that you generally have to sack something to scout it, because there is no one mon that counters all the sets, and chances are the sack gave it a moxie boost that now makes it uncounterable. such is life. even stall needs to have checking techniques sometimes. the problem there is that if you run a dedicated panic-button check mon (eg alakazam, scarf rak) on stall, you just lost a slot that you crucially needed for defensive synergy. now you're building a stall team with one mon down, so your check basically has to handle a loooong ass list of boosting threats. otherwise it's cost you more than it's worth.... either way you lose to something lol. running a dedicated panic button like that would probably reduce your need for phazing and toxic (both of which specialize in countering boosting sweepers), but you still lose out on a bulky defensive option that you kind of need in a team type like stall, that's so hard to use right now.

1- With each gen, a nice group of offensive sweepers are added. Just to name a few, Gen4 had Ape, Chomp, Empoleon, Lucario (and BP Scizor). Gen5 brought us genies, musketeers, genesect, hydreigon, chandelure, Haxorus. It's pretty hard to counter ALL those pokemon with only 6 slots and its going to be harder and harder. But one could argue that stall also got a lot of stuff: Regenerator, Ferro, Amoong, Pringles, etc. Yeah, but there comes the item 2-.

2- DEFENSIVE POKEMON DO NOT OVERLAP! OFFENSIVE DO OVERLAP. "Wtf u talking about?", you might say. Well, having both a CB Nite and a CB Haxorus on the same team isnt a dumb idea, seeing how they weaken each other counters. And you wont use Ferrothorn + Jirachi + Heatran on the same team just to be able to take 3 Outrage users. I know, most teams do not carry 3 outrage users, but you got my point.. And if you DO use 3 steel on the same team, you are going to create a opening, because the other 3 pokemon will have to cover the whole rest of the metagame.

3- 1 Stall pokemon walls (at best, those are just theory numbers) 15-20 pokemon. AT BEST. Meanwhile, 1 strong offensive pokemon is walled by 2-3 pokemon. In other words, if your HO manages to bring their Ferrothorn and their Heatran, the game is over. You will bring in your Scarfmence and just Outrage 3 of their pokes. In other hand, if they manage to bring your Salamence and your Lucario down, you still have a shot: bring their blissey down and sweep with your specs thundurus. So stall has actually LESS space for mistakes than offensive teams. 1 missprediction could cost you a pokemon and therefore the game.

Long story short, IMO stall is doomed. Its viability has been drastically reduced through the gens, and (unless something absurd like another blissey) is going to fade away in a gen or two. I know, this is about BW2. Stall is still semi-viable, but not as good as other strategies. Use it if you have balls.

Stall is a playstyle that really got nerfed in BW2.But I feel it is still viable and not impossible.Sure NP Thundurus-T,Mixed Hydreigon,SD Haxorus in rain are wall breakers that almost no defensive core can wall.But these mons are rarely used.I agree with alexwolf that "Stall is impossible this meta" is bullshit.It just requires some variation.Especially using revenge killers like previously mentioned.

Genesect perhaps played a vital role in nerfing stall,but I don't find it "extremely" hard to counter at all.There are many viable defensive cores out there that can stop Scarf Genesect,Pink Blobs and Heatran hard counters RP and Ebelt variants(unless it has hp ground but it hampers it's coverage moves).CB Genesect is something which I agree is major threat to stall with it's ability to beat both physical and special walls thanks to download and wide movepool.But Heatran still checks it.

One fact is overlooked when considering stall is that a lot sets and mons which BW2 brought lacks in usage.Because stuff like CB genesect and Mixed Hydreigon are of little use against offensive teams which are far more popular.

The pokemons which are nicely viable overall and is really threatening to stall are Taunt Tornadus-T ,specs Keldeo,Growth Giga Drain Venusaur and such.Xatu is something remotely dangerous to stall imo and it was popularised by lavos sun.Really,how are you going to beat Xatu when it will bounce any hazard or status.It also has nice bulk,reliable recovery and decent attacking options.

BW2 also gave some notable gifts to stall too.Amoongus is a bitch to face.Walling major threats like Breloom,Keldeo and Thundy-T to an extent is really impressive.Add the ability to heal just by switching is amazing.Not to mention access to spore to shut down something as well as ability to spread paralysis.I had nice success with a stall team featuring HAS core in early BW2.There were also other things like Gliscor getting Poison Heal+Roost,Ferrothorn getting Leech seed,Spikes,SR in one set etc.These are not to be ignored.

My first BW2-team was as weatherless stall one, which brought me to the finals of the Inaugural BW2-Tournament, only losing one single game (0:1), so stall is still viable, even weatherless.
Stall didn't get much new toys (most notably Amoonguss), however, with the right mons you're able to play around every single threat this meta offers. A combination of Amoonguss + Jirachi for example checks a lot of the new threats (Thundurus-T, Tornadus-T, Keldeo, Breloom and so on). Add Heatran to the core and you have a good check against sun-teams, Genesect, opposing Amoonguss etc. Now the only weakness are ground-types, which aren't to hard to check with the likes of Skarmory, also providing Spikes. You see, it's not to hard to build a stall-team. There are still two members left, but this core beats 90% of the meta, has Rocks + Spikes, Wish support, pHazers, status inflicters and so on.

I'd like to say that stall is still perfectly viable. I've gotten up to 1550 on PO, about the 30'st best player on the server. My team consistently beats everything except rain offense and some rain stall, and can still beat those if it predicts right.

Stall has less room for mispredictions, but it can outright wall enemy pokemon, removing the need for prediction, mostly. There's still double switches, but since stall usually has the hazards advantage... not always all that effective.

Stall is still viable, the problem is it's way less viable than pretty much every variant of offence save for maybe gravity. The thing about stall is that you can use it, just why would you want to?

18 of the 20 top used pokemon are immune to toxic spikes, plenty are resistant to rocks and immune to spikes, out of the weather starters only hippo is really decent at full stall and not using weather puts you at the full mercy of weather teams. voltturn forces stall to predict and play more aggressively more than ever because of the opponents switch initiative and also means toxic damage never gets a chance to build up. The omnipresent steel types and boosts to rock types' defences make it harder to use sandstorm for passive damage and power creep in general means you're often to slow to get off taunts or other important moves. There's no time to spin in today's metagame and magic bounce isn't viable because plenty of hazard setters can force the users of it out. That isn't even mentioning magic guard that gets rid of your main form of doing damage at all.

So stall can be used, it's just generally pointless when you could achieve the same success with almost any other archetype. The only reason to use it is if you enjoy the style or just want to prove it can be done.